Recently digital home electronic products such as personal computers, portable telephones and digital TVs (hereafter called apparatuses) normally have a GUI.
Creating a GUI program to execute a GUI on an apparatus, a GUI builder, to support the creation of a GUI program, is used to improve development efficiency.
Using a GUI builder, a designer arranges components constituting a GUI (GUI components), such as a button and an image, on an operation screen, and sets an attribute, such as size and color, for the arranged GUI components. The GUI builder creates a screen layout according to the GUI components arranged on the operation screen and the attributes which are set for each GUI component.
Using a GUI builder, the designer performs an operation to associate a processing program with each GUI component constituting the screen layout. Here the processing program, written in advance by a programmer, is a program storing processing to be executed when the user operates each GUI component.
If the designer ends the operation to associate the processing program with each GUI component, the GUI builder automatically generates a source code of the GUI program according to the screen layout and the processing program associated with each GUI component constituting the screen layout. An example of such a GUI builder has been disclosed in Patent Document 1.
In the case of the GUI builder disclosed in Patent Document 1 however, when the processing program replaces an associated screen layout with another screen layout, means of simplifying the operation to associate the processing program with each GUI component constituting the screen layout after the replacement is not considered at all.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Publication No. 4197095